What is the Impact of International Remittances on Poverty and Inequality in Latin America

By Pablo A. Acosta, C. Calderón, Pablo Fajnzylber, Humberto López. 2007

686 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Workers' remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries. However, little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, the authors find that remittances in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have increased growth and reduced inequality and poverty. These results are robust to the use of different instruments that attempt to correct for the potential endogeneity of remittances. Household survey-based estimates for 10 LAC countries confirm that remittances have negative albeit relatively small inequality and poverty-reducing effects, even after imputations for the potential home earnings of migrants.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/765787afb52821ab2acc0c495690cbedaf73d711

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Citations in the corpus

Remittances and Economic Growth: Larger Impacts in Smaller Countries? (2014, background): “Hildebrandt and McKenzie (2005), Lopez-Cordova (2006), Acosta et al. (2008) looked at impacts on human capital, Aggarwal et al. (2011) and Demirgüç-Kunt et al.”
Remittances and Poverty in Ghana (2009, positive): “Acosta et al (2008) use cross country panel data as well as household level survey data to investigate the effects of international remittances on poverty and income inequality in Latin America and finds that remittances reduces poverty by increasing income growth and reducing inequality at the…”
Remittances, Exchange Rate Regimes, and the Dutch Disease: A Panel Data Analysis (2012, positive): “…that rising levels of remittances, as any other massive capital in ow, can appreciate the real exchange rate in recipient economies (Amuedo-Dorantes and Pozo, 2004; López et al, 2007), and therefore generate a resource allocation from the tradable to the nontradable sector (Acosta et al, 2007).”
Do remittances improve income inequality? An instrumental variable quantile analysis of the Kenyan case (2016, background): “Acosta et al. (2008) find that remittances haveworsened poverty by a smallmargin for countries in Latin America, while Acosta et al. (2009) find that remittances lead to an appreciation in real exchange rates, which has in turn left poor households worse off. Several studies focus on the impact of r”
Financial development, remittances, and real exchange rate appreciation (2009, background): “Research shows that remittances can increase physical and human capital for recipient households (Cox Edwards and Ureta 2003; Woodruff and Zenteno 2007; Fajnzylber and Lopez 2008; Yang 2008) and can reduce overall poverty levels (Adams and Page 2005; Acosta et al. 2008).”
Evaluating the Economic Impact of International Remittances On Developing Countries Using Household Surveys: A Literature Review (2011, methodology): “Acosta et al. (2008) therefore expand on this study by employing a two-stage Heckman model to control for selection in examining the impact of remittances on poverty in 10 Latin American countries.”
The Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Human Capital: Evidence from Latin American Household Surveys (2007, background): “In this regard, our analysis extends and completes that in Acosta et al. (2007).”